SEC football is like a religion, which means that along with the good stuff it also breeds intolerance and bigotry. Jerit Roser, the managing editor of LSU’s student paper the Daily Reveille, wrote an excellent op-ed piece for the Friday Picayune about pigskin and prejudice.Here are the first few graphs:
I enjoy traveling to LSU road football games, and I have
close friends who happen to be African-American.These two facts wouldn’t seem to have much to do
with one another, but trying to convince these friends to
make the trip with me to Oxford, Miss., this weekend for
LSU’s game with Ole Miss proved a futile task.Oxford apparently is a destination for the Southeastern
Conference’s racists — at least based on my
friends’ experiences and the comments littered across
SEC fan message boards.I’ve heard of Ole Miss fans yelling the n-word at
LSU fans. I also have heard this: “They hang
Confederate flags — enough said.” (LSU had its own
problem with flags at tailgating a couple of years ago.)It is not that Ole Miss itself condones this or
isn’t trying to eliminate it. The chancellor, for
example, has asked the band to stop playing “From Dixie
With Love” if fans don’t stop chanting, “The
South will rise again.” Still, things might only be getting uglier. The threat of
losing “From Dixie With Love” has sparked a
YouTube video of an Ole Miss fraternity member embarrassing
himself, his fraternity, his school and state. The
university has since shown him the door.“I really don’t care,” said the student,
Michael Hudec. “(F-word) those (n-words).” Phi
Kappa Tau suspended Hudec and another member when the video
hit the Internet, according to the Ole Miss student
newspaper.
How charming.
LSU and Ole Miss square off later today. That guy Hudec is definitely what LSU fans refer to as Tiger Bait and what this Tiger fan calls a malaka.